Monday, May 7, 2012

A couple of weeks ago we added official WPF support to
WriteableBitmapEx. Today I'm happy to announce that WriteableBitmapEx now also officially supports Windows 8 Metro Stlye WinRT .NET XAML. With that WriteableBitmapEx is now available for 4 platforms: WPF, Silverlight, Silverlight for Windows Phone and Metro Style WinRT .NET.
Although Direct2D is the best solution for fast 2D graphics with Windows 8 Metro Style, I think there are scenarios where the WriteableBitmapEx could be helpful, esp. when using C# with XAML. I also know that some devs were waiting for this to port their Windows Phone apps to Windows 8 Metro Style.

WinRT Differences
Unlike the Silverlight WriteableBitmap, the Metro Style WriteableBitmap doesn't provide the pixel data directly. Its IBuffer PixelBuffer property doesn't have an interface to get the color information. Fortunately there are a few C# extension methods available which provide the pixel data as byte array or stream in the BGRA pixel format. Yes, BGRA and not like all the other platforms supported by WriteableBitmapEx as ARGB. The BGRA format is mainly used by Direct2D, which might be the reason for this hidden, but important difference of the Metro Style WriteableBitmap.
The WriteableBitmapEx algorithms are written for the ARGB pixel format. Fortunately I was able to keep the details away from the library user by leveraging the BitmapContext concept we introduced with the WPF support. This approach makes it possible to share almost the same code for all 4 platforms without being cluttered with #if directives all over place. Actually the most significant WinRT adaptation inside the WriteableBitmapEx methods was done in the FromContent method, which loads an image from the app content and provides it as WriteableBitmap. See this StackOverflow question I answered if you're interested in the details.
Nothing comes for free, but if the BitmapContext is used the right way, the performance hit won't be that much thanks to an internal reference counting WriteableBitmapEx' BitmapContext uses. No worries, you don't have to change all your WriteableBitmapEx calls, just wrap your calls in a simple using(writeableBmp.GetBitmapContext()) and you will only have one buffer conversion instead of one for each draw call.
It's really simple to use:

All samples were tested with the new version, but due to the refactoring more testing is needed. Please test this version with your projects and report the bugs you encounter. You can download the binaries here. Note that this package only contains the WriteableBitmapEx binaries for Silverlight, Windows Phone, WinRT Metro Style .NET and WPF. All the samples can be found in the source code repository in the branch "WBX_1.0_BitmapContext". If all goes well, this branch will become the trunk and the 1.0 RTM in a few weeks.

WinMD / Windows Runtime Component
There's also a WinMD version available which makes it possible to consume the WriteableBitmapEx library from all the WinRT Metro Style projections, although only C# and C++ XAML make actually sense.
I had to move some parts and leave some functionality like the ForEach out, but it contains 99% of the library's features. Unfortunately the C++ sample I created crashes when the WriteableBitmapExWinMD library is loaded. So for now this WinMD version can be found in a separate branch "WBX_1.0_WinMD" in the source code repository and it won't be part of the trunk and release until it works with the sample. I'm a bit running out of time and don't know where to look for, since it seems all is wired up correctly and compiles fine. If you are a WinMD wizard and have a few minutes, I'd appreciate if you could look into the WinMD version.